´óÏó´«Ã½

This is Ireland's Catholic Primate, Archbishop Sean Brady. By all accounts, he's not a happy man this week. There has been a remarkable ourpouring of public support across Ireland for Fr Iggy O'Donovan, the priest in Drogheda who invited the local Church of Ireland minister, Michael Graham, to concelebrate Mass with himself and two other Catholic priests at their Augustinian priory last Sunday to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. A Catholic moral theologian, Professor Vincent Twomey, told me today that Fr Iggy's action is a very serious breach of canon law. Indeed, he says it not only merits "punishment", but that the church's law requires punishment in a case its kind -- and perhaps even by the Vatican directly. He then tried to make an argument that Fr Iggy seemed to him "theologically naive" -- as if this may both account for his ecclesiastical crime and also constitute some mitigation in any future church court. Since Fr Iggy is a theologian himself who spends part of each year lecturing at a theological college in Rome, this may be wishful thinking on the part of Vincent Twomey (who is, incidentally, a former student of Pope Benedict). Are we now likely to see Fr Iggy called before an ecclesiastical court in Dublin or Rome? It's your move, Archbishop.